Training for a Marathon – An Introduction

People don’t often look at me and think “runner”.  I love myself some cake; and a day of Netflix, followed by an Indian takeaway is my idea of absolute heaven!

It took me ages to start identifying as a runner because of that blurry bit in between not being able to do something and being able to do it.  It sometimes seems like you can’t really claim to be able to do something, if there is possibly someone in the room who might, potentially, be able to do it better than you – but maybe that’s just a British thing.

My incredibly dirty running shoes *Eugh!*

Photo Friday: San Francisco

Our final stop in the US of A before heading to Asia was the land of fog and fabulousness, San Francisco.  Two relatively short road journeys, from the Metzger Farm in San Andreas to Sacramento, and Sacramento on to SF, and we were ready for three days of sightseeing.

TL;DR May

This has been a peculiar month, adjusting back to the Western World after our time in South America. We wrote about the route we took through the countries we visited here. We’ve met up with some old friends in North America that have been nice enough to show us around, and that has helped the strange sense of bumping back to reality.

Our Bucket List

When we first started talking about travelling the world, we had a good think about the places that we really wanted to visit. It’s actually a lot harder to do than you might think. It mattered a lot more to us to experience life in other cultures than to see specific cities or places.

The ultimate travelling experience for D, is to complete the Inca Trail. He wants to prove to himself that he can undertake such a physical challenge, and also he loves getting up close and personal with history. On the other hand, my first choice is to visit Niagara Falls, due to my love of waterfalls of all sorts of shapes and sizes.

The continent we are both looking forward to visiting the most is Australia, and hope to spend next Christmas Day sunning ourselves and surfing on Bondi Beach. I’m also very excited to be able to scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef, after snorkelling there when I was younger.

I’ve recently decided that I would like to go back to Pattaya, the town in Thailand that I grew up in. I’d love to see what’s changed and what’s different from what I remember.

D’s love of history has also led to him putting the Pyramids of Giza on his list. I guess that I will go too, but mainly due to me sharing an obsession of cats with the Ancient Egyptians.

Staying on the cat theme, I’d love to go to Taipei City to visit the original Cat Cafe which opened in 1998.

Las Vegas is a slightly less cultured place that made our list even though I set foot in a casino for the first time just over a year ago. We are also looking forward to everything else Vegas has to offer, although we hear the heat can be really harsh.

On the other end of the temperature scale, at some point on our travels, D really wants to stay at an Ice Hotel in Sweden, and I want to visit St Petersburg, due to my slightly geeky love of architecture.

 

The Puzzle of Puzzle

Most of you will have heard about this adorable puddle of fluff. We found Puzzle at a shelter in August 2014 and she meowed her way into our hearts.

She’s not very good at being a shelter kitty because she really hates other cats! She likes pretending she’s a tiger when she sees other cats in the neighbourhood, but she’s a kitten at heart and ends up running off if they ever get too close.

I think if it weren’t for her, we would have had this travelling thing planned ages ago. But the first question we asked whenever we talked about it was, ‘What do we do with Puzzle?’

I think shelters do a great job, but we didn’t want her to be put back in the system. Also, to be truthful, we want to see her again at the end of the 12 months, and hopefully have her back living with us as ‘our cat’ (although you never can really ‘own’ a cat).

Luckily, we both come from a long line of cat lovers – and ours is particularly lovable. So we have four options;

My parents – They live a couple hours drive away which isn’t great and they already have two cats. But they have a huge garden and both cats pretty much keep to themselves.

D’s parents – They live quite near, but have two cats already who are sisters. One of them is a particular bully to all the other cats in the area.

My brother – Who lives in London. He’s not a cat person, but his girlfriend has just moved in, and she might appreciate a ‘trial cat’.

D’s brother – Who lives near their parents. They’ve just had a baby (our gorgeous niece), but I know they’ve been missing the cat they lost about a year ago.

Update

Puzzle is going to live with my Uncle. My cousins seemed not to hear the word ‘might’ in the sentence, “We might get a cat”, so they are borrowing her for a year to see how everyone gets on with a new fuzzy friend.

New York – Part 2

Read about our first few days here.

On the Tuesday, we jumped on the subway and rode almost to the end of the line, down to Wall Street. I’m not sure what I thought it would be like, but it was just an ordinary street. The streets weren’t paved in gold, and all the business people in suits looked like just that – normal business people.

Afterwards, we took the free Staten Island Ferry across the water, which gives great views of the Manhattan skyline as well as steaming past Liberty and Ellis Islands. The ferry was a mix of over-zealous tourists elbowing each other out of the way to get a space at the windows, and the disinterested locals, who had obviously ridden this route multiple times. The weather was clear and dry, but freezing. We spent most of the ride outside on the deck and were completely wind-swept by the time we got into St George’s, on Staten Island. Once we got off, we hopped straight onto the next ferry back to Manhattan.

In the afternoon, we visited the 9/11 memorial. On each of the sites of the two towers there is a ‘waterfall within a waterfall’. Around the outside, the names of all the victims are inscribed. Each morning, staff place white roses in the names of anyone who should be celebrating a birthday. It was beautiful and peaceful, but also heartbreaking.

As the sun started to set, we joined the queue to enter the 9/11 museum. It turned out that Tuesday evenings have free admission. The museum is brilliant, if chilling. With the events still in living memory, and all the technology available at the time, the events of the day are recorded in minute detail and come alive in the museum in a way that doesn’t happen when you look at Roman or Egyptian artefacts.

Wednesday was the coldest day while we were away, and for some inexplicable reason, we chose this to be the day we hired bikes to explore Central Park. We booked the bikes online the night before, which proved to be much cheaper than simply turning up at the bike hire shop.

We hired the bikes for four hours, but that was not nearly enough time to explore all of the park. It would take days to really get into all the nooks and crannies. We downloaded the app from the Central Park conservancy which includes a celebrity audio tour, and a very detailed map. My favourite places in the park were Belvedere Castle, The Dairy and this statue of Alice in Wonderland.

That night, we went to Chennai Garden by Tiffin Wallah, a vegetarian Indian restaurant. We had an assortment of appetisers to start and then I had Palak Paneer – a dish with spinach and cheese, and D had Baigan Bartha – a curry with aubergine, tomato and onion and we shared a rice. It tasted amazing, and we left with our bellies full and our spirits high.

On Thursday, we joined the mass of people waiting for the Ellis Island Ferry. This is another place that does airport style security scans. The boat does a continuous loop between Manhattan, Liberty Island and Ellis Island. You can get off at whichever you choose to. The landing jetty on Liberty Island is almost round the back of Lady Liberty, so the first views as you step onto the island are her back. It’s certainly a novel way of seeing her, and I was so amused by this that I stood there and chuckled to myself. Then I realised what a weird sight I was being and headed off to find D.

Liberty Island does have free audio guides, but when we got there a tour with a ranger was just starting. She was really enthusiastic and we enjoyed listening to her explain about the origins of the statue and all the symbols on the base. We were surprised to find out that Gustave Eiffel designed the structure that supports the statue and also that the copper plating is only a few millimetres thick.

We were very far from the only people posing like this.

Not long after, we hopped back on the boat to Ellis Island. The sheer size of the immigration hall was impressive. I imagined what it must have been like to have to wait there after months on a ship, waiting for someone to call your name, and hoping that there would be no issues with you continuing your journey into America.

Back on Manhattan, as a surprise, D had made reservations for us to go to a Cat Cafe. Meow Parlour is a place you can go to be with cats in a home-like environment without the responsibility of owning a kitty forever. However, if you fall in love with one of your feline playmates, you can adopt them through the cafe’s link with a cat adoption charity. We spent half an hour in there (which went way too quickly), playing, stroking and cooing over adorable sleeping kitties.

 

Third and final part coming soon…